A different perspective on global and local issues not the headline news

News Junkies

There are health junkies, sports junkies, car junkies and news junkies. Last Sunday, I happen to stumble upon a Porsche show, with models going back to the late 1950’s. It was phenomenal. These were car junkies.

News and sports junkies have something in common. They know the history of players. They can do a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking. Example: “What an idiot, the wide end receiver was wide open and he decides to run with the ball. I could have done 10X better.”

This is the case of FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, whose idle conversations on the news of the day and office politics has been blown way out of proportions by the right wing news media. They were sharing their common interest in politics. They thought their conversations were private. They said mean things about both Democrats and Republicans. This was part of an extra-marital affair. The affair ended and so did Strzok assignment to Mueller’s team.

Initially, Peter Strzok was the agent in charge of investigating Hillary Clinton’s email. It meant working nights and weekends, reviewing reams of emails. I think the text messages to Lisa Page, a lawyer with the FBI, were at times an emotional release to the pressures of work. The conclusions of the Wall Street Journal are:

Texts critical of Mr. Trump represent a fraction of the roughly 7,000 messages, which stretch across 384 pages and show no evidence of a conspiracy against Mr. Trump. Rather, a broader look shows an unvarnished and complex picture of the lives of an FBI agent and lawyer who found themselves at the center of highly charged probes.

Further the WSJ article states:

They logged long hours and frequently worked on weekends. They seemed dedicated to their jobs but didn’t hesitate to chastise or criticize many others beyond Mr. Trump, including their colleagues and each other. In deeply personal office chatter, they come across as intense, ambitious and unsure of their standing in the bureau.

The short text messages were understandable. They were real busy. After the email investigation concluded, Peter Strzok was assigned to Mueller’s Russian investigation team for two months, before the text messages were discovered. He was reassigned to work as the head of Human Resources for the FBI.

Peter Strzod also suggested a change in Comey’s memo on Clinton’s email investigation, indicating that she was “extremely careless” instead of “grossly negligent” to avoid a misrepresentation that her actions fit the legal definition of the crime of “grosss negligence” as Secretary of State. So, this was a change to clarify Comey’s statement.

If there was any inappropriate done in Peter Strzok work either in the email or the Russian investigation, it would be in the text messages to his confidant. All there is a lot of office chatter after very long hours at the office.

The take away message is, your right to privacy changes dramatically once you pass through the office doors of your work. The Fox news commentator’s obsession with FBI conspiracy theories and misrepresentation is for rating purposes only. I hope the best for these two FBI agents. Time to move on. You can call the entire Patriot’s team f**king idiots, and no one will come after you.